Book Review: THE BRIDES OF HIGH HILL

TITLE: The Brides of High Hill (The Singing Hills Cycle, Book 5)

AUTHOR: Nghi Vo

115 pages, TorDotCom, ISBN 9781250851444 (hardcover, e-book, audio)

MY RATING:  4 stars out of 5

At the start of The Brides of High Hill, the fifth book in Nghi Vo’s wonderful Singing Hills Cycle of novellas, Cleric Chih is in the process of accompanying a family to the titular estate, where the daughter will be married to the lord of the manor. Chih quickly discovers that not all is as it seems: the Lord has a history of short-lived marriages with tragic ends and a strangely ill son from one of those previous marriages; the Bride-to-Be’s family has secrets of their own; and why can’t Chih remember how they parted ways with Almost Brilliant, the neixin who usually accompanies them, and came to be traveling with the family?

Vo packs a lot into each Singing Hills novella, and The Brides of High Hill is no exception. What at first seems like a simple tweak to the legend of Bluebeard morphs into an Asian-inflected gothic suspense novel with a possibly haunted estate and then morphs again into a rumination on colonialism and on revenge as an unending cycle.

Chih of course finds themself at the center of all of this, not only as chronicler but also as the person who must try to find a solution that satisfies all the parties involved. This is not the first time we’ve seen Chih operate without Almost Brilliant at their side – but is the first time we’ve seen Chih unsure of where Almost Brilliant is. And that makes a difference in Chih’s confidence in their ability to recall details about Lord Gao’s family and the bride-to-be’s. It’s a side of Chih I feel like we haven’t seen before and continues the character growth we’ve seen in the preceding four novellas.

Vo does a wonderful job setting the mood of High Hills with details about the architecture, the smells, and the distinct differences noticeable between daylight hours and the nighttime. I understood Chih’s sense of disorientation, shared their discomfort at not being able to put their finger on exactly what was creating the sense of wrongness, felt like I was there in the misty, uncomfortable dark.

I can’t speak too much on the aspects of the book that touch on the ravages of colonialism and cycles of revenge (and how we break them), or on the parts that involve gaslighting, without spoiling major plot points that are best left discovered as they unfold. I can say that when I realized what was going on, I found Vo’s handling of the gaslighting in particular to be expertly done, with great care and understanding of the victim’s questioning of how to trust their feelings in the future. Likewise with the “how do we break violent cycles” issue.

I think I say this in every review of a Singing Hills Cycle installment, but these books truly can be read in any order; you do not have to know anything about what transpired in books one through four to enjoy The Brides of High Hill. I highly recommend picking it up – or picking up the first book in the series, Empress of Salt and Fortune, and savoring each novella in turn.

I received an electronic advance reading copy of this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. I did receive the e-ARC well before publication date but never posted the review. The Brides of High Hill is available now wherever books are sold.

Book Review: MAMMOTHS AT THE GATES

TITLE: Mammoths at the Gates (Singing Hills Cycle #4)

AUTHOR: Nghi Vo

128 pages, TorDotCom Publishing, ISBN 9781250851437 (hardcover, also e-book and audio)

MY RATING:  5 stars out of 5

Mammoths at the Gates, the fourth novella in Nghi Vo’s Singing Hills Cycle, finally introduces readers to Cleric Chih’s home monastery. Chih’s return to Singing Hills is not as joyous as it should be. Chih’s mentor, Cleric Thien, has passed away. Most of the monastery inhabitants are away studying a recently uncovered flooded city. And Singing Hills is being threatened by the granddaughters of Cleric Thien, who want their grandfather’s remains to lie in state, because of his high status as clan head before becoming a Cleric and be buried alongside their recently deceased grandmother. Chih must find a way to help the acting head of the monastery, who also happens to be Chih’s childhood best friend Ru, deal with the granddaughters while honoring Thien’s memory and teachings under the traditions of Singing Hills.

Mammoths at the Gates is one of several books I’ve read recently that delve into the myriad ways in which we process grief and loss. Both Chih and Ru exhibit behaviors I found very familiar as they process their loss: the great outpouring of emotion only when alone or with the closest of friends, and the using of work, even if it’s just “busy work,” to blunt the raw emotions enough to get through the days/weeks that follow the loss. But while for Chih keeping busy is a choice, for Ru it is a requirement; as acting head of Singing Hills Ru must attend to the visitors at the gates as well as the day-to-day operations of the monastery. Vo also expertly addresses the swings that happen from recalling happy memories to recognizing the reality that the person is truly gone, including those moments when we “hear” the person, or “see” them out of the corner of our eye and think for a moment that maybe news of their passing was incorrect … or those moments when we simply forget the person is gone.

By contrast, there is Thien’s avian companion Many Virtues. In the Singing Hills Cycle, Cleric are accompanied by neixin, birds with infallible memory – they recall everything they see and hear, which makes them amazing repositories of world history, legend, and the details of an individual’s life. The bond between Cleric and neixin is indelible and deep. Through Many Virtues, Vo explores what happens when our sense of loss is so profound we cannot imagine continuing to live without the one we’ve lost, and how sometimes that leads to self-harm (off-screen, in this case).

Through Thien’s granddaughters, Vo also looks at the way we sometimes mourn an idea rather than a real person. These granddaughters didn’t actually know their grandfather. But they were brought up on stories of his career and they say the palpable love their grandmother held for their grandfather even after he’d become a Cleric. But they still mourn the loss as though they knew him directly, mirroring the way in our world we mourn the passing of celebrities we’ve never actually met as though we knew them intimately.

Vo also comments on the cultural/societal ways in which we “say goodbye,” the rituals that are attached to acknowledging a person’s passing and the impact they had on our lives. I found Singing Hills’ ceremony, one of storytelling about the deceased with a touch of ritual rather than one focused more on the ritual than the person, to be sweet and ideal, providing some of the most poignant moments of the book.

Chih also must navigate the changes in their relationship with Run. As a traveling Cleric, Chih has been away from the monastery more than they have been present, while for reasons of health Ru has not been able to travel and has had to forge a life in the absence of their best friend. Watching Chih reconcile the past with the present was a bit uncomfortable at times but was important for both characters.

Even though this is the fourth book in the series, the Singing Hills novellas are all stand-alone. So even if you haven’t read the preceding three books you can pick up Mammoths at the Gates and quickly understand Cleric Chih and their world. For those that have read the earlier novellas, there are oblique references to those events that will tantalize without making new readers feel like they are missing vital information. (And the fifth Singing Hills Cycle entry, The Brides of High Hall, comes out on May 7, 2024!)

 I previously reviewed book three in the Singing Hills Cycle, Into the Riverlands, as well as Nghi Vo’s standalone novel The Chosen and the Beautiful.

I received an advance reading copy of this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Book Review: INTO THE RIVERLANDS

TITLE: Into the Riverlands (Book three of the Singing Hills Cycle)

AUTHOR: Nghi Vo

100 pages, TorDotCom, ISBN 9781250851420 (hardcover, e-book, audiobook)

MY RATING:  4 stars out of 5

SHORT REVIEW: Into the Riverlands is the third entry in Nghi Vo’s excellent series of novellas chronicling the adventures of Cleric Chih, a non-binary monk from the Monastery of Singing Hills, whose mission is to collect stories for preservation so that cultural memory might extend beyond the passing of the participants of the stories and those who tell them. This time, a chance encounter in a remote inn brings Chih into contact with fellow travelers straight out of a Wuxia film: a talented young martial artist, the martial artists’ traveling companion, and a husband and wife pair who know the Riverlands better than anyone Chih could hope to encounter but who may have secrets of their own. The travel scenes are full of excellent stories-within-the-story and crisp dialogue. The fight scenes, when they happen, are beautifully choreographed and come with a palpable sense of danger.

LONGER REVIEW: Into the Riverlands is the third entry in Nghi Vo’s excellent series of novellas chronicling the adventures of Cleric Chih, a non-binary monk from the Monastery of Singing Hills, whose mission is to collect stories for preservation so that cultural memory might extend beyond the passing of the participants of the stories and those who tell them. As with the previous entries, there is just the right balance of introspection and action, of listening and doing, propelling the story along and leaving questions for the reader to ruminate on.

Chih and their Neixin travel-mate Almost Brilliant (do not call her a bird, thank you very much) have dined with the former lover of an empress and faced down sentient tigers, usually using a combination of storytelling and careful questioning to resolve conflict. This time, a chance encounter in a remote inn brings Chih into contact with fellow travelers straight out of a Wuxia film: a talented young martial artist of the “Southern Monkey” school, the martial artists’ traveling companion and sworn sister, and a husband and wife pair who know the Riverlands and its history better than anyone Chih could hope to encounter but who may have secrets of their own. The trip of course is not without excitement thanks to the apparent resurgence of a legendary bandit group. The travel scenes are full of excellent stories-within-the-story and characters disagreeing with each other on some details. The fight scenes, when they happen, are beautifully choreographed and come with a palpable sense of danger. I genuinely wondered if everyone we met at the beginning of the book would survive. (No spoilers as the that.)

We learn a bit more about Chih’s personality (not vain, but aware of how a Cleric should appear; not overtly religious but aware that sometimes their duty is to perform religious ritual; not a fighter by nature but willing to stand up for what’s right and protect those who can’t protect themselves) in this book, and a better sense of the relationship between Chih and Almost Brilliant (who comes across as more bossy and egotistical and less patient than in the first book in the series (having been absent from the second)).

As usual, Vo’s dialogue is crisp and full of hidden meaning for the reader to prise out as the story develops. Characters have depths not apparent when they are first introduced – and the line between the personal, historical, and legendary is not always clear. Vo also trusts her readers to put the pieces together and doesn’t spell everything out by the end of the book, which I greatly enjoy. I found myself, days after finishing the book, thinking about the connections between the characters, the stories they told about themselves, and the history/legends they shared.

Even though this is the third book in the series, the story is completely stand-alone and can be enjoyed/understood without having to have read The Empress of Salt and Fortune or The Tiger Came Down from the Mountain. In fact, I can’t recall any obvious references to either book. If they were there, they hopefully will intrigue readers starting with this book to pick up the previous two.

I truly hope Nghi Vo has many more tales of Cleric Chih and Almost Brilliant to share with us.

I received an advance reading copy of this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

This review is very late. Into the Riverlands published on October 25, 2022